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Mercy’s Debt

Book Review of Mercy’s Debt, by Sloan Archer

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Mercy's Debt

Yesterday I grabbed Sloan Archer‘s novel, Mercy’s Debt, off of the Amazon KDP list. Lately I’ve been really agonising over which book to read next, so when I accidentally tapped this one, opening it directly after it downloaded I decided to just roll with the punches and read it right then.

Description from Amazon:
After graduating from the prestigious Dewhurst University, Mercy Montgomery finds herself in a bit of financial trouble: over $108,000 worth of financial trouble, in fact. She can’t find a job to save her life, and with bill collectors constantly at her heels, she has no idea how she will ever come up with the money needed in order to keep her head above water.

Mercy’s monetary worries seem to be over after a chance meeting with mystifyingly pale Michael Graves, who offers her a high-paying job at his company, Dignitary. But there’s a catch; the seemingly harmless Dignitary is an underground organization that offers human chaperones to wealthy bloodsucking clients.

As if congregating with the undead doesn’t make life complicated enough for Mercy, there’s a savage killer on the loose who appears to have a craving for her blood. Soon Mercy is torn between a dark and dangerous underworld of supernatural desire and a simple life of practicality, and sexy but dangerous business magnate Robert Bramson is the man she blames for her confusion. As the killer closes in, Mercy realizes that she must make a decision. But will she make her choice too late?

Review:
Sloan Archer is one talented author. I’ll give her that. Her character’s are fresh, funny, and fleshed out, especially Mercy and her roommate Liz. Their banter is some of the best in the book. She understands humour and can time a joke brilliantly. Though I’ll admit the main sex scene felt a little choppy, it still had some smoulder to it, and I like the cover.

Mercy’s Debt starts out with something a lot of recent college grads can relate to, many student loans and few job prospects. I don’t know if the completely out-of-leftfield lesbian exploration passage was supposed to be something else recent grads could relate to, funny, or a red herring of some sort. I liked it well enough. It’s something you don’t see addressed in the genre often, but it seemed to serve no purpose in the book. In fact the book, in terms of the story, doesn’t even start until Mercy meets Michael and Robert. The background information in the first couple chapters helped solidify Mercy’s character, but seemed awful long for such a short novel.

Which brings me to my only MAJOR complaint, the shortness of the novel. This is something I seem to be harping on about a lot lately. Where is the rest of the book? I’d say it ends on a cliffhanger, but that requires an ending of some sort. Something has to wrap up and conclude. This is one of those books that just stops instead. You still don’t know who the murder is, what happened to Liz, if Mercy will fall in love or accept the love offered her, pays off her debts, or lives happily ever after or not. You know the characters names and some of their histories, that the setting is in California, there are vampires and someone is killing women, that’s is.

I laughed out loud a lot in this book. I liked the main and supporting cast. I routed for the fragile hero and witty heroine. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, right up until I hit the unexpected words ‘The End’ and got a little bit angry. The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that there isn’t yet a second book to run out and buy, even if begrudgingly. I have no problem buying sequel to finish a series. It always irks me to buy sequels to finish a book and that’s what this feels like. I got a free teaser, but have to pay for the conclusion. This doesn’t leave me with feelings of happy contentment, even if I enjoyed the book up until that point.

Review of Buffy Chistopher’s Bound By Darkness

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Bound By DarknessI grabbed Buffy Christopher-Vincent’s Bound By Darkness off of the KDP free list. At the time of posting it appeared to still be free, there and on Smashwords.

Description from Goodreads:
Lila Anderson’s is having visions of murdered women in the back alleys of San Francisco through the eyes of a hero trying to save them. She’s supposed to be a dominatrix, not a psychic! This hero has a name. Drake Bennett. Drake leads a solitary life as a vampire and when Lila invades his mind he wants her out.

Then a known murderer kidnaps Lila, and uses her life experience in bondage and domination to break her and turn her against Drake. Will the deep feelings of desire she has for Drake and their psychic link be enough to save Lila before she succumbs to her dark desires?

Review:
I picked this book up solely because I thought it was interesting that the main character was a Dominatrix. I envisioned a strong, sexually dominant female who knows her own mind and body. I thought, ‘well, this could be fun.’ It wasn’t.

Lila was billed as a Dominatrix but in almost every sex scene she was playing a Submissive, getting off on her own rape essentially. (That’s Submissive with a capital S by the way.) I don’t mean to infer that  BDSM and Dom/Sub relationships are akin to rape, of course not. But in the first sex scene for example, Lila was shackled, gagged, blindfolded and whipped by a homicidal maniac that she was terrified of, knew had killed at least one woman THAT NIGHT, didn’t want to be in session with, but couldn’t escape, and had no reasonable expectation of survival. Then afterwards she cried because of the trauma. Rape. And she’s supposed to have orgasmed in the middle of all of that? Riiiggghhhttt. 

I very rarely don’t finish books, but I almost gave up at that point. I just wouldn’t have picked that book up to start with. That’s before I even get into whether I believe Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs would have allowed her to enjoy any aspect of the experience if she was so scared for her life. Maybe I’m just being naive about the life-style, but it seems unlikely that basic biology would allow the body to prfioritize sexual satisfaction over physical survival to start with, no matter how much you like pain, need release, or how you’ve been ‘trained’. Both fear and climax require hormones and, while no expert, I would expect those that produce fear to top those that lead to sexual enjoyment. It’s worth noting too, that in those scenes in which she isn’t a Submissive, she is never once a Dominant either. 

Having read the book I can now read between the lines of the description and see that the clues were there. I just didn’t see them, so I can’t completely fault Christopher-Vincent for my dislike of the subject matter. I chose to read the book. I apparently let myself focus on the character’s Dominatrix role as the primary focus of the description instead of the “life experience in bondage and domination to break her.” Yea, that’s the theme of the book. There is no female empowerment here. If you’re looking for it, go elsewhere. I kind of wish I had.

The basic writing in the book is fine. I didn’t notice very many editorial mishaps and, though I found it exceedingly repetitive, the plots moves along. Granted this is erotic fiction. There’s probably 70 pages of plot and 200 pages of sex, most of it questionably consensual (if not wholly non-consensual).

In the end I can’t completely trash the novel. I might not have liked it, and I didn’t. I had to force myself to finish it. I acknowledge that most of those things I disliked are of the personal opinion sort. I was uncomfortable with Lila’s constant role as a victim and her sexual satisfaction during extended scenes of abuse. These men were trying to hurt and break her. There were no safe words to use, no trust or understanding that the Sub was actually a power player in the game. She was a slave.  There was never any real explanation for why Lila started having visions of Drake to start with and I thought that the centuries old antagonist was dispatched far, far too easily. These opinions can’t reasonably be seen as a reflection of the book’s intrinsic value as a piece of literature though, erotic or otherwise. I did really like the host of side characters, especially Charlie and David, and Drake was a pure, kind soul that you couldn’t help but route for. 

Book Review of John Blackport’s Raingun & Resolution

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Quite some time ago author, John Blackport, sent me an e-copy of Raingun for review. I finally managed to borrow a Nook to read it on. Though, doing so didn’t do much to further my side of the Kindle vs Nook battle that continues to rage between my husband and I. Oh well, it was worth it.

RaingunDescription from Goodreads:
Rick Rivoire is flush with money, women, and prospects. He protects his country as one of the Rainguns, an elite regiment of spellcasting cavalry. 

But national policy drifts ominously into slavery and religious persecution, sparking rebellion. Joining the rebels could land Rick on a prison ship, in slave-irons — or atop the same gallows where he watched his father hang. 

The alternative looks no brighter. The status quo imperils Rick’s hard-won self-respect. Supporting tyranny would doom his dream to emulate the valiant swordswoman who braved a den of monsters to rescue the lonely, terrified nine-year-old boy he once was.

Rick can’t stay above the fray forever. He must either defend a government whose actions disgust him — or risk everything he has to chase justice.

This story unfolds in a world of bloodthirsty pirates, brave musketeers, and vile monsters. Its target audience is anyone who has ever wrestled with questions of whether, and how, to risk opposing the actions of their country

Review:
I’ve had this book on my to-read list for a long time and was finally able to get around to reading it. I’m glad I did. I kind of fell a little in love with Rick Rivoire. I’m a sucker for an honourable man. I admit it, and Rick just tries so darned hard to be just and fair in his actions. He may resent the hell out of his mother, but she obviously raised him right. Though, how is a bit of a mystery. He is a lad though. He and his friends tease each other mercilessly, often at the expense of any female (whore or otherwise) in the vicinity. But then to pretend a 25-year-old soldier, alone among is fellow cavalrymen would be anything else would risk a singular lack of realism. Lets face it, not dying, food, drink and women almost certainly feature highly in the bunkhouse of any army anywhere in this world or the next. Plus, the camaraderie between him and his cadre (especially Kristoph) is just plain funny.

The book throws you right into the action and it can be a little discombobulating. There is a glossary and some explanatory information (geography, government, pantheon, etc) at the end and I would recommend reading this first. I did not do this, but would probably have been better off if I had. There is a lot to this world…I think 12 different gods/goddesses, each with a complex religious faction of their own, two nations (not including the elves), a full aristocracy, and then all of the military ranks. Then there is the currency, geography, spell casting, and monsters. Phew, it’s a lot to keep up with. I imagine this is going to be a long series. It just doesn’t seem like it would be worth setting all of it up unless it is.

There are a number of flashbacks in the beginning, addressing pivotal points in Rick’s childhood. This goes a long way toward explaining the man he becomes, but it also made the beginning of the book feel choppy. I spent a lot of time trying to catch up. 4 or 5 chapters in they taper off and the story takes on a more linear gate and reads a lot more smoothly. The writing itself has a fairly distinct cadence. There were times it felt forced, but in the end I decided that it would more accurate to say that it was used to create atmosphere. So, even if a sentence appeared a little convoluted it matched the character.

Rick spends A LOT of time in battle. The body’s ability to be resurrected multiple times and for spell casters to heal soldiers on the battlefield means he and his unit are able to be stabbed, slashed, burnt, shot and beaten over and over and over again. And they are. It’s not that it is horrendously graphic. The book isn’t, but he is a soldier during war time. The Raingun basically progress from one battle to another. This movement from field to field, enemy to enemy is actually what moved the book along. With each new altercation comes a little more information about what is happening politically in the country and another hint about what might be happening to/for/around Rick. A lot of this mystery isn’t cleared up by the end of the book. That there is civil unrest on the horizon is pretty clear, as are the reasons and players but what part Rick is to play, and he is obviously going to play a part, isn’t.

Raingun makes for an interesting contribution to the fantasy genre…I would have read it just so I could keep referring to Military Mages. It’s fun to say. I have the sequel, Resolution, which I plan to read too.

resolutionDescription from Goodreads:
Rick Rivoire used to love the army.

But now he and three other Rainguns are assigned to guard a Duke’s mining camp. The cruelty of the Baron against the workers is sickening. Rick’s long dreamed of rebellion. Perhaps now is the time!

However, Rick finds he can sometimes influence the Baron toward leniency. Is rebellion truly the best course against an authority that listens to reason?

Then the camp is attacked by Lucan, an ambitious necromancer eager to turn the defenseless slaves into undead minions. Rick’s duty commands him to delay the chaos of rebellion, until he sees Lucan crushed.

Rick must aid other forces come to fight Lucan: kind but brutish ogres, led by humans in war paint with tomahawks. How can he gain their trust?

In a town under siege, he meets the endearing Anya. Is she as innocent as she appears? Or is she a dangerous pawn?

Review:

Resolution finds Rick and his friends (though mostly Rick) defending a mine and the slaves who work it from the ever-increasing number of undead. I think that fans of the TV show The Walking Dead would love this book. It’s essentially a zombie story, though not touted as such.

Like in the first book Rick tries very hard to maintain his ethical and moral certitude in the face of increasingly questionable circumstances. He is confronted with a Baron who both perpetrates incredible cruelties and surprising acts of caring. He is a grey character. He firmly believes himself to be doing right, while others (Rick among them) are disgusted by his harsh punishments and befuddled by his occasional heroism. Rick is also forced to examine the actions of his own culture/government, questioning his willingness to continue to support decisions that he finds morally reprehensible. Slavery is becoming more widespread and permanent; dying no longer frees one of the subservience to a master. Certain religions are being suppressed and outlawed and all the while the followers of the gods of darkness seem to being growing more prevalent if not powerful. Oh and they seem to have it out for Rick in particular.

What I like about Rick is his introspection. He regularly examines his own thoughts and actions. Though not always pleased with what he finds, he isn’t afraid to see himself for what he is. I did miss his friends though. In theory they were assigned to the camp with him, but they play a very small part in the book.

There are a few unexplained aspects to the book. For example, apparently counting plays some part in the use of the Raingun’s magic. I noticed this mentioned in the first book too, but there never is any real explanation of why it is necessary. Magic also has to be replenished, but I never firmly understood how or why. It’s not that I can’t simply suspend enough disbelief to just accept these facts. This is a book of fantasy after all. But so much of the world is so meticulously laid out those aspects that aren’t stand out.

Also like the first book this one ends with mystery still afoot, mostly those which involve Rick. There were more hints that there is more going on around him than he realises, but still no resolution. As I sit here deciding whether or not to race out and get book three I can’t help but wonder how far into the series I’ll have to go before I start to get those answers. I wouldn’t really consider this too grievous an issue except that there aren’t yet anymore than three books, so I would be left waiting. hmmm